"They Can Choose..." Usha Vance On Raising Interfaith Kids And Hindu Roots
Second Lady Usha Vance said in an interview that she and husband, Vice President JD Vance raise their three children, Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel, in an interfaith household, since she is Hindu and her husband is Catholic.
The first lady spoke to Meghan McCain on her podcast "Citizen McCain". She opened up about how their children have the choice to decide whether they want to be baptised Catholics as they grow up.
"So what we've ended up doing is we send our kids to Catholic school, and we have given them each the choice, right? They can choose whether they want to be baptised Catholic and then go through the whole step-by-step process with their classes in school," she said.
The Second Lady had once been a Democrat and her friends were "bewildered", as she later on became the spouse of a Republican vice president, per a NYT article.
"At the time when I met JD, he wasn't Catholic, and he converted later and when he converted, we had a lot of conversations about that because it was actually after we had our first child, maybe it was after Vivek was born too," she said. "When you convert to Catholicism it comes with several important obligations, like to raise your child in the faith and all that."
"We had to have a lot of real conversations about how do you do that, when I'm not Catholic, and I'm not intending to convert or anything like that," Usha added.
She said that their children know that she is not Catholic, and that they have "plenty of access to the Hindu tradition from books that we give them, to things that we show them, to the recent trip to India, and some of the religious elements of that visit".
She spoke about her family and said that her grandmother is a devout Hindu. 'She, you know, she prays every day, she does the temple regularly, she'll do her own pujas, and so they access it that way,' Vance said.
However, she said that they don't always celebrate Hindu festivals at home, but the children call her family members, although she revealed about having a Holi party at home. 'We're actually hoping to have a Holi party and we're looking forward to that next year,' she said.
Usha Vance is the first Indian-American second lady. She met JD Vance at Yale University and the couple got married in 2014.
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